From July 1, BPG will be restructured.
The agencies BPG Bates, BPG Cohn & Wolfe, BPG Maxus and BPG Possible will be gone. Instead, media buying and data – previously the remit of Maxus – will be under BPG Max, while content and consulting – including most of the capabilities of Bates, Cohn & Wolfe and Possible – will sit under BPG Orange.
In partnership with a local partner in Kuwait City, BPG will operate all its services there as BPG Kuwait.
BPG Max will be headed up by Satish Mayya, formerly head of BPG Maxus. BPG Orange will be headed by Fiona Quinn, who has moved to Dubai from BPG’s Kuwait operation. BPG Kuwait will be led by Souhail Arabi. Sunish Menon, who had previously been managing director of ad agency BPG Bates, will assist BPG Max CEO Mayya, and Kevin Hasler, previously managing director of PR agency BPG Cohn & Wolfe, will work with BPG Orange CEO Fiona Quinn.
The announcement comes a year after it was announced the Maxus, a WPP brand, and fellow Group M agency MEC were to merge. The two became Wavemaker in most markets, but BPG, where WPP is a minority shareholder, kept the Maxus brand in the Middle East. Earlier this year WPP announced it would also be merging its PR agencies Cohn & Wolfe and Burson Marsteller, which operates in the region as Asda’a Burson Marsteller.
For more details of the changes at BPG and an in-depth interview with BPG Group CEO Avi Bhojani, look out for the next issue of Campaign.
